Captain Cook’s first voyage rounded Cape Horn but came no closer to Antarctica. His second voyage was marked by his complete circumnavigation of the Antarctic continent, and his pessimistic statements that no one was likely to get any closer than he did through the impenetrable ice and fog.
p. cxxxvii: Cook also had his instructions, duly labelled ‘secret’, copies of the journal of the recent circumnavigators, and, as we can deduce from his own journal, a small library of voyages and travels and sailing directions for the less unknown parts of the world—Harris, de Brosses, the East India Pilot, the French Neptune Oriental; which, with Banks’s books, must have occupied no small space in the great cabin.
p. 378: on defective charts.
p. 413-14: more on dangers of bad charts
p. 460-61: how the hardships of such voyages are reported at home.